A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of digital image processing and, more particularly, to designs that enable users to archive their personal photo albums from Web-based e-commerce photo sites onto individual storage type media (e.g., disc-shaped media, such as CD-ROM, DVD, Photo CD, or the like) with a customized table of contents (TOC) imprinted onto the disc-shaped media.
2. Description of the Background Art
Consumer enthusiasm for accumulating collections of personal digital photographs has led to the popularity of temporarily storing and cataloging them as personal albums on the Web. Several commercial Internet services facilitate this activity by providing reasonable disk space for personal photo storage along with server-side Web application software for users to customize their albums, make those albums available to others on-line (sharing), and engage in further e-commerce with the providers, such as ordering printed copies.
Over time, the number of on-line albums and digital photographs belonging to a digital image enthusiast increases, as there is a limit to the commercially-available storage. Periodically, at least some of a consumer""s albums are likely to be deleted from this storage. Understandably, the consumer may want to personally store some of these pictures and/or albums longer term, and in a manner to be able to view or use them without dependence upon an Internet connection. Although digital images can be copied to photographic paper, often people will want to retain their pictures in a digital format.
Typical low-bandwidth connectivity to the Internet and limited disk space on personal computers preclude the practicality for an individual downloading the pictures from the commercial Internet site for long-term storage onto a home computer. Additionally, one could want to retain some pictures for a long time, as with photographic printsxe2x80x94past the life expectancy of a consumer computer. The likely storage medium for very convenient, affordable, and permanent digital storage is disc-based media. Examples of disc-based media include xe2x80x9cCDxe2x80x9d or compact disc (including CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, and Photo CD) and DVD (including DVD-ROM and DVD-RAM). New disc-based media formats are introduced to the marketplace on a routine basis. For reducing complexity of the discussion which follows, the term CD will be used to simply refer generally to all disc-based media, including all forms of compact disc-based and DVD-based media, and similar media formats.
Current consumer CD technology is very inexpensive, and the storage capacity of a single disk, several hundred megabytes (or more), is sufficient to accommodate hundreds of full-resolution images in the common JPEG format. In fact, the commercial Internet photo-hosting services already transfer a consumer""s albums, or assortment of pictures, to CDs as part of their e-commerce offerings. Extrapolating from this trend, many digital photo consumers will accumulate multiple photo-storing CDs just as film-based photographers accumulate multiple shoeboxes or albums of photo prints. The digital photo collectors are facing the same dilemma encountered by analog picture owners: how to easily retrieve/review individual pictures from their personal warehouses of images. The current method for finding an individual picture in a haystack of photo-storing CDs is to individually load each CD and then to individually click on each file within to see which picture it is.
Commercial CDs, such as music CDs, are easily identifiable because they have identifying labels pre-impregnated onto the non-data side of each CD. Music CDs generally only contain less than a dozen individual recordings that are indexed (as a table of contents) either onto the non-data side of the CD itself or into the CD cover case; so the consumer can quickly scroll through such a CD to find a specific song. However, a custom personally-compiled photo-storing CD has many more images than a music CD, and has no current methodology for marking its contents in a manner that facilitates navigation within.
Clearly, photo-CD enthusiasts need a way to easily catalog and identify what images a particular individualized CD holds for future reference. Previous attempts to address this problem have been to affix some form of paper label with the table of photo-contents onto the sleeve or box in which the CD is packaged. However, over time, the association, or matching, of a CD with its cover breaks down. CDs tend to get separated from their sleeves, thereby separating from their table of contents. People want to handle and use these inexpensive consumer products without undue care.
Digital photo enthusiasts tend to accumulate many digital pictures over time, such that they may elect to archive them in albums on disc-based media or xe2x80x9cCDsxe2x80x9d. Users need to identify which CD contains which album, and therefore which pictures. The present invention provides a Web-based system implementing a methodology that allows a customer to easily archive multiple albums that are on-line onto a CD along with a personalized table of contents printed onto the CD itself. This user-friendly index of the digital images within the CD saves the user from having to load the CD in a CD drive to be able to determine which pictures it contains.
The working environment of the system includes a user""s browser, a photo Web site""s server system, a user-definition-to-XML module, an index sizing module, an XML-to-label-image converter, a CD-Remote module, a CD-positioning robot, a CD xe2x80x9cburnerxe2x80x9d (i.e., writer), and a label printer. The environment includes connectivity to the Internet. Operation occurs as follows. A user employs his or her browser (e.g., Microsoft Internet Explorer) to interact with the photo Web site connected by the Internet. The user-definition-to-XML module, which runs in the Web server, is the interface for the user to select the digital photos to be archived or stored (i.e., xe2x80x9cburnedxe2x80x9d) into a target CD, and to design the TOC label that will be printed onto that CD. The user-definition-to-XML module allows the user, employing the browser, to select a desired table of contents (TOC) configuration (e.g., based on specification of album title and/or photo-facsimile indicia).
The user-definition-to-XML module coordinates with the index sizing module to ensure that the user is not attempting to overload the capacity of the printable surface area on the CD. For example, the maximum number of standard thumbnail images that can be imprinted onto the surface area of a CD is about 24 (e.g., arranged as two concentric circles; the inner circle allowing for a maximum of eight thumbnail images, and the outer circle able to handle 16). If the user chooses to use the option for both thumbnail images and an album title to accompany each image, the maximum number of TOC items is typically less than 24. Calculation of the surface area required for each image and/or text label can be determined simply by computing the dimensions of a bounding box that bounds each image and/or text label. A bounding box for an image, for instance, can be calculated based on the pre-existing and known dimensions of the image. A bounding box for a text label can be calculated based on font metrics known about the text label (which are available from the underlying operating system, such as Windows); see, e.g., Petzold, C., Programming Windows, Fifth Edition, Microsoft Press, 1999, especially Chapter 17: xe2x80x9cText and Fontsxe2x80x9d, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference. The index sizing module monitors the status of the unused capacity of the label space as the user adds more items to the TOC being created. The index sizing module communicates this information to the user-definition-to-XML module, which notifies the user if the TOC is full or if the binary image data being archived exceeds the capacity of a CD. The index sizing module also converts the location, dimensions, and rotation information into XML.
When the user completes the selection of the images for archiving and specifies the option (and titles) for the TOC, the user-definition-to-XML module converts all the user-specified TOC configuration information to XML, which it passes to the XML-to-label-image converter. The XML-to-label-image converter transforms the XML data and the associated thumbnail images into a single bitmap image of the TOC sized to the proportions of the target CD disk. The bitmap image may be created in any suitable image format for a desired deployment, including lossless compressed (e.g., compressed TIFF, PCX, GIF, compressed BMP, or the like), lossy compressed (e.g., JPEG, JPEG 2000, or the like), or uncompressed (e.g., uncompressed TIFF, uncompressed BMP, or the like) formats. The XML-to-label-image converter ensures symmetry in the layout of the TOC items on the circular disk within the boundaries of the maximum printable area. The user-definition-to-XML module displays a WYSIWYG representation of the TOC label, generated by the XML-to-label-image converter, on the user""s browser screen, asking for verification and approval of the final TOC for this particular CD.
The CD-Remote module notifies the CD-positioning robot, the CD burner, and the label printer, that the system has a list of full-size or photo display size images, as well as the single bitmap image of the TOC, ready for producing a CD. The photo service hosting the photo Web site maintains the full-size images of all the photographs in the albums for further e-commerce business transactions, although the user normally experiences only the photo display size copies during on-line viewing. The user may elect to archive the photo display size images or the full-size images onto a CD. However, the typical preference is to archive the full-size format. The photo service burns the albums onto a new CD, and prints the image configured with the custom TOC onto the other side of the CD.
After computation of the final label image for the graphic TOC, the label itself may be affixed to the CD using conventional CD burning and printing equipment. For example Microtech Systems, in Belmont, Calif., provides a complete hardware/software system for burning the binary data (archived images) onto the CD, printing the specified label directly onto the non-data side of the CD, and operating the CD-positioning robot that moves the CD disk between the burner and the printer at the appropriate time.
The CD-Remote module pre-masters the binary data for the full-size or photo display size images being archived into a target image file format, such as JPEG, JPEG 2000, or ISO-sanctioned file format that is appropriate for CD storage systems. The CD-Remote module supervises the TOC printing and binary data burning of the CD, as well as coordinates the CD-positioning robot to synchronize with the CD burner and the label printer. Burning and printing of a single personalized TOC takes about five minutes per photo-storing CD, with minor modification of that equipment to accommodate the graphic TOC image as described above.